TRENTON — At 9:34 last night, Arm & Hammer Park returned to what it is on most of the other 70-plus nights the Trenton Thunder are in town.

Young men worked on their skills, hoping someday to sniff some small portion of the success that last night’s borrowed third baseman has reaped.

But for the first seven innings of last night’s game in front of 8,113 against the Reading Fightin Phils, it was a possible permanent goodbye to Alex Rodriguez, nearly two decades removed from the promising kid who showed up with Seattle a few weeks before his 19th birthday, soon to be hailed as one of the triumvirate of great shortstops in the American League along with future teammate Derek Jeter and then-Red Sox Nomar Garciaparra.

As coincidence would have it, Garciaparra’s name towered over last night’s proceedings as one of the Thunder’s retired numbers.

In last night’s 7-5 win agains Reading, Rodriguez he walked four times, had a hand in four outs including a double play, and air-mailed a ball in the second inning off the bat of Reading’s Matt Tolbert that Thunder second baseman Jose Pirela leapt to catch and avoid an error for Rodriguez. It went down as a hit for Tolbert.

After he was pulled following the bottom of the seventh inning, he lingered in front of the dugout for a moment while fans raised their smartphones, hoping to capture possibly the last glimpse of Rodriguez before he disappeared from view.

What becomes of Rodriguez now remains to be seen. Last night could have been the last time he’s on a team with any connection to Major League Baseball. It could be the end of an up-and-down story in Yankees history, something less than a last hurrah on a stage much smaller than the one in the Bronx for a player with the stature of Jeter, but who was never beloved in the same way.

Major League Baseball and the Yankees turned down requests yesterday to meet with Rodriguez’s camp and the union about the embattled star’s expected drug penalty, two people familiar with the talks told The Associated Press. The overtures were made two days before MLB was poised to hand Rodriguez a lengthy suspension for his part in the Biogenesis case. The two people spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because no public statements were authorized.

There hasn’t been any definite word on the severity of Rodriguez’s looming penalty, with speculation ranging from a lifetime ban to a suspension through the 2014 season.

There was also the matter of an ongoing playoff push, though the Thunder still have 29 games to go. At press time, Trenton stood a game and a half ahead of third-place Portland for the Eastern Division’s last playoff spot.

On a night for a bullpen start, Graham Stoneburner went three scoreless innings in his first start since June 29. Reading’s Anthony Hewitt and Trenton’s Pirela traded three-run home runs, Pirela’s giving Trenton a 5-4 lead in the fifth. Maikel Franco, the highly regarded Phillies prospect, tied it at 5-5 on a sacrifice fly in the seventh. And if nothing else, Rodriguez’s two-night stay with Trenton gave his teammates a little taste of the majors, a level only a few will experience first-hand.

Franklin praised Rodriguez as fitting in well with his Thunder teammates, hanging out in the clubhouse and playing cards with guys with whom he may never play with again.

Franklin also put a positive spin on the dozens of media who assembled to cover an ugly story for the Yankee franchise Franklin praises so often. This level of attention comes with a career as great as the one Rodriguez has had. The current tenor of that attention, however, the rest of the guys in the Thunder clubhouse can do without.

“This is part of their training as much as the baseball is on the field and in the batting cages,” Franklin said of the media attention. “I think this helps them more than anything else.”